Same Sunshine, Different Street
NYU just sent me my Orientation schedule. I guess my cancellation hasn't been processed yet. I shouldn't have opened the document, but I did and now I'm sitting here crying in this stupid internet cafe in Paris and I don't even know why.
These past few days have been really hard. I came to this internet cafe today to buy a new plane ticket home, feeling heavy with disappointment and failure. But then I got here and read Jennifer's blog comment and I wonder if that isn't the right thing to do.
I took a walk this morning to try to clear my head. There was a moment at the intersection of rue Verginaud and rue Auguste de Blanqui when I stopped to decide if I should turn right or left and I was suddenly struck with the realization that it didn't matter in the slightest. It was a profoundly existential moment and rather than feeling liberated by this freedom, I felt asphyxiated by the possibilities.
A boy asked me out on a date last night. And this time it wasn't a construction worker or a guy in a Peugeot in front of the Moulin Rouge. No, it was much worse than that. It was someone I actually know.
My would-be suitor is a guy who works at one of the supermarkets by my house. I go there pretty much every day of my life and he works there pretty much every day of his life so it makes sense that we would become acquainted. He's very cute and he speaks a little English and he asked me out on a date last night and now I can never go to that supermarket again. Which is unfortunate because they are the only supermarket that sells my favorite gnocchi and my favorite tomato sauce and my favorite brownies and if I'd known that he was planning to ask me out on a date, I would have stocked up.
I imagine that, for normal people, being asked out on a date by a cute boy is probably perceived as good news. Certainly not cause for WII-bunker-level gnocchi purchases and making shocked faces to oneself while walking home (do you make shocked faces to yourself after something ridiculous happens? because I always do).
I think normal people would probably also enjoy spending a month in Paris. It's Paris for goodness sake, not the Mojave Desert. There's no conceivable reason for me to feel as lost and alone as I do.
I say no to things all the time and I never know if I'm saying no because I'm brave or if I'm saying no because I'm scared.
I emailed NYU and asked if they could wait until Monday to process my cancelation. I don't know why; it doesn't make the slightest difference if I turn right or left. It's the same sunshine and the same shade, just a different street.
10 comments:
What a difference a week makes! I should probably read your blog more than once a week or I might miss big weighty decisions.
Here's my two unsolicited cents:
There's what you want and what you Want.
You figure out what you want by asking 'how do I feel at the moment about this?'. What you want is good for figuring out what to eat at a restaurant, and what you feel like eating at the moment is pretty much ok for such decisions.
To figure out what you Want, though, how you feel this moment may or may not give guidance. You figure out what you Want by asking that little voice inside and waiting for an answer. When it answers, you Know. If you still have to ask 'what do I Want?', you don't yet know. When will you get your answer? It depends, but I don't know of a way to rush the answer before its time.
Be careful not to confuse what you want (at the moment) with what you Want.
That is some very good advice there, CB. I consulted the little voice and to, my surprise, it says it still doesn't know. It added, however, that gnocchi sounds like an excellent choice for dinner.
Hi Miss Laurie
Well I'm shocked to hear that you're not going to law school, and simultaneously not surprised at all, and instead, happy that you've made that decision. Law school would have been intellectually stimulating, challenging, and made you damn smarter about contracts and rules of property and estates. But what do you care about that for? You don't seem like a girl to me who's hell-bent on having a thorough understanding of property law.
Therefore, I am glad that you are cancelling your law aspirations, and waiting around (albeit with an increased rate of headaches or heartaches) to find something that better suits your dreams, aspirations, and who you are.
A graduate degree in writing sounds like a good fit for you. Keep your options open, and good things will come after the bad ebbs and flows away like a Coney Island Tide.
Other than that, your Parisian apartment looks so lovely, so minimalistic and au natural that I am charmed and green with envy. How I wish I could be in your shoes, eating French food, being a stranger in a strange land, and being homesick for home while filled with the opportunities that present themselves from Paris.
About your date: How could you say no to a friendly Parisian supermarket worker? :) hehe. If anything, I would advise you to go back, and offer yourself to go experience the city with him sometime. There has to be no 'date-like' actions or motives involved on your end, but the chance to hang with a local, and see what they can offer, is very nearly one of the specialest (:)) parts about traveling. Perhaps he'll take you to a pub-like cafe deep hidden inside a fortress of buildings, with maze-like streets outside. Perhaps he'll take you to the most beautiful park imaginable, and you'll share wine and cheese, and bad language exchanges, but you'll at least always remember that about Paris. If I had been in your shoes when he asked, I very likely would have been shocked and scared and said no too, because when traveling alone you do become entrenched in the solitude of your own head, but you can always go back, say yes, i would like to go to an english language movie, can you help me find one.
Well, I myself should go to grad school for writing b/c it seems like i've just written the first 2 chapters of a novel.
i'll say goodbye now, wait adieu adieu adieu
lvoe, andrea michelle
Andrea Z, I love, love, love you like that Pixies song and I miss, miss, miss you. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life but I hope you are in it.
Laurie, I don't know you and probably never will, but know this: there is a small part of my soul that wishes I was you right now. Even with the hard decisions, the tough choices, you are living the dream of a thousand inner-Bohemians (spelling?). I, too, am making hard decisions these days, bot, oh!, to be making them in Paris! So in the midst of all your consternation (word of the day!) smile to yourself with the secret knowledge that when you need to buy a glass of wine, you can get it from someone who only speaks French...
It´s normal to feel that way, and it has little or nothing to do with where you are...It´s being away from what is familiar that makes you feel rootless and terrified at times. Hell, I´m in my Motherland and I feel that way many a day. It´s also ok to not know what you want, just so long as you are able to stall on doing things that would preclude options in the future. Can you defer for a year?
Haha, thank you for putting things in perspective. It all sounds so romantic, doesn't it? And it is in a way but in another way, Paris is just a place (albeit a beautiful, fascinating place) and wherever we are, it's just us that's there, if that makes any sense. But you're certainly right that I should count my blessings.
Jess, I think it's too late to request a deferral and they probably wouldn't give me one anyway. You generally have to have a super good reason and I don't think "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up" counts, unfortunately. I'm working on a post right now in which I fail to explain my reasons (since I'm not entirely acquainted with them) but I've decided actually to go to law school after all. I don't think I'm ever going to get to a point when I just Know. I'll get to a point when I think I Know and then a day later I'll Know something different so I'm just going to throw up my hands and admit that I don't Know anything but that I'm going anyway because it's what I want to do. I don't know if I want to be a lawyer or not but I do know that I want to go to law school and maybe that's enough for right now. Maybe the rest will follow.
I hope you don't feel lost too much. I think about you every day and how brave and smart you are for doing what you do. I don't always comment on your posts because I feel silly leaving a thousand comments that say, "Gee whiz, you're a lot smarter than me!" over and over, ha.
Hi love,
For the record ~ I would just like to say that my suggestion for your story was not meant to be a nudge for which way I thought you should turn in your law school plans . . . I was simply playing off of the quote that you included at the top of that blog post.
Also, I think traveling is terribly lonely. It's amazing, beautiful, and often a magical experience and at times you see and meet funny, sweet, interesting and inspiring people . . . but very often it is terribly, terribly lonely . . . even if you travel with other people (I think the better you know and like your travel companion/s, the less lonely it can be though). So I hope you don't feel bad for being lonely in a beautiful place.
. . . but I see now that you are on your way back!
much love!
Oh, Jennifer, I didn't think you were trying to nudge me but you did anyway and I'm glad you did! As Casey pointed out, your comment could have been nudging me in one direction just as easily as the other.
And thank you for saying that about travel. To be honest, I've been being a bit hard on myself about this trip. People always come back from trips and talk about how amazing it was; no one ever says "Yeah, probably 80% of the time I was bored, depressed, lonely, frustrated, or all of the above." That's part of why I'm trying to be as 'real' in this blog as I can without turning into a whiney teenager. You are a gem and yours and Andrew's postcard is in the mail. Well, almost.
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